 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Clarence Wilkinson
Date: 1999-02-23 04:55
On 02-21-99 11:01 Lelia wrote (among other things) that Martin had made several lines of Committee models,dating back to 1927. I bought one of the first of the Committee models on May 14, 1936. The chairman of the committee which advised Martin was Bud Freeman, who was playing tenor with Tommy Dorsey at the time. I do not know of any Committee models prior to that. I just happen to have the guarantee card that came with the instrument. It show the serial number as 115081. I was playing professionally at the time and used this instrument until 1949. It was a good horn.
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Author: Lelia
Date: 1999-02-23 12:43
Clarence Wilkinson wrote:
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On 02-21-99 11:01 Lelia wrote (among other things) that Martin had made several lines of Committee models,dating back to 1927. I bought one of the first of the Committee models on May 14, 1936. The chairman of the committee which advised Martin was Bud Freeman, who was playing tenor with Tommy Dorsey at the time. I do not know of any Committee models prior to that. I just happen to have the guarantee card that came with the instrument. It show the serial number as 115081. I was playing professionally at the time and used this instrument until 1949. It was a good horn.
I'll bet it was a good one! Some Committees are even earlier than 1927, although there's some doubt about exactly when that model starts, since there are a lot of prototypes out there that are more than just transitional models. I didn't mean to imply that the Committee started in 1927; I picked on that date merely as an example of how confusing serial numbers and model names can be, an example that I happen to be very familiar with because I own a silver-plated 1927 Martin Committee tenor sax with a serial number that got repeated in 1951 on a later and very different Martin sax that was also known as the Committee. It took me awhile to find out for sure which model I had because there's so much confusion and so much individual variation within models. (Meanwhile, Martin was making the excellent "Handcraft" model at the same time as my Committee -- my first question, on the www.classicsax.com bb, was whether I had a Handcraft!) I'm still not sure I've got the whole progression straight, although Paul Lindemeyer and others contributed to a good thread about Martins recently on the alt.music.saxophone newsgroup, if anyone wants to follow up. The first Committees, officially called "The Martin," got the nickname of "The Committee" because of the fine musicians who advised on this model, but later Martin began engraving the "Committee" name on some of them (but not all of them, confusingly enough--the engravings vary and serial numbers overlap between Committees that say "Committee" and Committees that don't). Anyway, the first ones with that engraving weren't the first in the model. The model also changed and evolved, thanks to this input and a very creative, innovative group of employees at Martin. I love the oddball octave key mechanisms on my Committee (it works the best of any I've used, and looks great, too -- I've got a slightly different one on a stencil Martin alto from the same period and it's also a winner), although my repair guy has warned me that I'd better be nice to that horn because that octave key will be a bear and a half to work on if I mess it up. The later Committee II and Committee III are highly regarded too, and played by professionals today. I'm just an amateur and found my old Committee in filthy, neglected but basically sound condition at a flea market. One of these days I'll get it repadded. Real soon now.
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